Good morning, committee. I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to make an opening statement.
It is significant that you have me and Maureen Watt in front of you today. In fact, you could probably have invited a number of our fellow ministers as well because health inequalities in the early years cross all portfolios, as well as agencies beyond the Government, as Maureen Watt said.
I welcome the opportunity to be here because early years policies and issues surrounding the early years are close to my heart—in more ways than one, given the imminent arrival of my bump at the end of the month. The Government wants to make sure that Scotland is the best place in the world for all children to grow up in and has a number of policies that are aimed at doing that. Maureen Watt has already mentioned some of them, and I add the getting it right for every child approach, the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, our play, talk, read campaign, our commitment to high-quality early learning and childcare and our national parenting strategy, which is the only one in the United Kingdom. All those policies have in common the perspective of prevention and early intervention.
I was pleased that the United Kingdom-wide social mobility and child poverty commission’s “State of the Nation 2014” report commended Scotland’s early years task force and the early years collaborative for their continued focus on prevention and early intervention.
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I know that the committee had an evidence session on the early years collaborative, which is a vehicle and method to deliver our evidence-based policies and has the overall ambition of making Scotland the best place in the world to grow up in, by reducing inequalities and giving every child the very best start in life. It empowers practitioners and those who work on the front line to use their expertise to test different approaches for different children and families, initially on a very small scale before scaling them up. Is the venue difficult for some families? Is the form too complicated for someone who cannot read very well? Are we making assumptions about our services meeting people’s needs? Those are the questions that we are encouraging practitioners to ask when they approach their job.
The collaborative is also about co-production: working with parents and children to build on the assets that are available in families and communities. We are proud that the collaborative is world leading. We are the first to use this methodology in a complex, multi-agency environment, and there is a regular flow of requests from around the world to visit or receive further information about what we are doing in Scotland.
Far more important is the fact that we are now beginning to see the small tests of change bearing fruit and delivering for children and families. For example, at one site, the breastfeeding rate among a small group of vulnerable mothers has increased to 86 per cent. According to the Information Services Division, the local average is 25.5 per cent. Work is also going on at some sites to reduce the time that it takes to place a child in a permanent care setting.
At another site, parents are being encouraged to read their children a bedtime story. That scheme started with two parents in one nursery and is now working with 150 parents across six nurseries. Staff continuously evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and have witnessed outcomes that have exceeded their expectations, including increased numbers of parents sharing books at bedtime with their children. In one setting, parents have read 148 books to their children in the past year. The scheme has improved children’s speech and language, which means that they have needed less support in class, and it has established bedtime routines, which has resulted in better behaviour in class. As well as improving concentration and behaviour, it has improved attachment and bonding between parents and their children. Parents have reported improvements in their own reading and confidence, their understanding of child development—and their essential role in that—and their own wellbeing and self-esteem, as they witness their actions making a positive difference for their child and themselves. Other sites are using the model to assess whether they are targeting their resources at the correct place, with some surprising results.
Of course, we still have progress to make and culture can be slow to change, but the enthusiasm and commitment that we see from the 700 practitioners from all across Scotland who attend the learning sessions that are held in the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre every few months make us optimistic that progress is on its way and is continually changing our culture.
Thank you for allowing us to make our opening statements, convener. I look forward to answering the committee’s questions.